Suddenly, I feel the pressure is on to get jobs in the garden done. One of these was to use up the rest of the latest bokashi to add fertility to the new rhubarb bed, after it was lifted last autumn to make way for the pond.

The hole also got rid a good amount of old paper work, so nice to say bye bye to some of the past, apart from anything else. Hopefully, this will also help with water retention for a little while at least.

One thing I am kicking myself about is not mixing the bokashi with the feathers before I put them in the hole. This would have prevented the majority of them blowing round the garden instead. Still, the soil already has what remains of the bokashi that went into the ground when I built a hugelbed here a couple of years ago.

And boy, was there some worm activity still going on! I never used to see so many worms but now they are obviously attracted to all that food to process courtesy of my bokashi bin. I am sad, though, that I’ve disturbed so much ground over the past few months. How many of them, as well as other types of soil life, I must have killed I dread to think.

Talking of disturbed ground, or rather no longer disturbing it, the other item on my list of jobs today was to use up some of the bricks I’ve acquired on a wall round Monday’s hugelbed. This is to become a raised bed, where I will mulch with compost to bring it up to the top of the wall if possible.

I’ve decided not to do that yet, though, because I don’t want lemon balm seeds, which are probably still activity in the compost, to germinate around the broad beans I plan to put in the bed.

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About Helen

I have always been interesting in living a more environmentally friendly lifestyle and used to do what I could. Now, I have come to realise that we have reached such a point in terms of environmental degradation that it is more important - perhaps - to focus on building resilience. I therefore do as much as I can to reuse, grow my own and encourage a supportive community, for example. I also keep reading and learning all the time.

My Helen it’s starting to look real good! That Bokashi method seems to be a good idea and working for you, and for the worms! You set an example to me as I have yet to start in the garden – fact is that there are too many winter vegetables growing and already lots of spring stuff coming up, so where does one start. Having a storm at the moment though this evening it has calmed down quite a bit.

Well, we each do what we need to, Agnes. I hope the storm isn’t too bad.

Anyway, certainly the bokashi has been beneficial. Because my soil is so sandy, it is a bit of a battle getting the levels of organic matter up but I am hopeful that with more perennials/ground cover I will have more success.

Good question! It depends on you to some extent. I’ve read time and again that it’s best to avoid magazine paper as it apparently rots too slowly. Red dye in ink has the heavy metal cadmium in it (or some shades may have) and ink may also be petro-chemical based and therefore pollute the soil.
I take the view that whatever I put in the ground is going to be in minuscule amounts and any uptake by the plants is going to be even more minuscule. Of course, there is always the potential for run-off into water courses but my couple of payslips and an old insurance certificate are nothing in comparison with a whole field being sprayed with say glysophate.
There will be fewer bills going in the ground now, though, as I mostly get everything on line 😊

Well, the benefit is to balance out the nitrogen from vegetation but there are other means of adding that to the heap.
I send most paper to be recycled but am not keen on confidential waste going that way.

Shredded paper can’t be recycled incidentally – it makes the paper fibres too short. So, I tear off the confidential bits to compost and where most of a sheet of paper is otherwise intact, I put that in the recycle bin.

I learned about the shredded paper through work, when it started to get serious about its own waste streams at the beginning of the century. That’s why I started putting it in the compost bin once I got a house with a garden 😊.